Since this is Fark, and on Fark there is always SOMEONE that knows the answer; are ligers the ones that are missing the 'Hey, stop growing now" gene and can get ridiculously large? And would that affect the ultimate size of these lili guys?

balancing act:Since this is Fark, and on Fark there is always SOMEONE that knows the answer; are ligers the ones that are missing the 'Hey, stop growing now" gene and can get ridiculously large? And would that affect the ultimate size of these lili guys?

balancing act:Since this is Fark, and on Fark there is always SOMEONE that knows the answer; are ligers the ones that are missing the 'Hey, stop growing now" gene and can get ridiculously large? And would that affect the ultimate size of these lili guys?

Yes, they are. And if a pair had an F2 baby it would also lack the stop growing now gene. Does that mean tigons get stop growing now genes from both parents?

balancing act:Since this is Fark, and on Fark there is always SOMEONE that knows the answer; are ligers the ones that are missing the 'Hey, stop growing now" gene and can get ridiculously large? And would that affect the ultimate size of these lili guys?

Yes, ligers are larger than both their lion/tiger parents. I would think a liliger would be similarly large.

Female ligers aren't sterile. Male ligers are. They don't occur very often in nature, because lions and tigers rarely share the same habitat. Female ligers can reproduce with male lions and tigers.

Awww, those little kitty sized things are going to grow up to be 500+ pound killing machines?

Seriously, how does a 500 pound beast have a 2-3 pound baby? Because lots of 100-200 pound women would like to know.Especially my 5 '1 sister in law who barely cracks 100 pounds non pregnant. Her 7 pounder required an emergency c-section.

octopied:Awww, those little kitty sized things are going to grow up to be 500+ pound killing machines?

Seriously, how does a 500 pound beast have a 2-3 pound baby? Because lots of 100-200 pound women would like to know.Especially my 5 '1 sister in law who barely cracks 100 pounds non pregnant. Her 7 pounder required an emergency c-section.

Ramien:octopied: Awww, those little kitty sized things are going to grow up to be 500+ pound killing machines?

Seriously, how does a 500 pound beast have a 2-3 pound baby? Because lots of 100-200 pound women would like to know.Especially my 5 '1 sister in law who barely cracks 100 pounds non pregnant. Her 7 pounder required an emergency c-section.

Having litters (instead of normally single births) helps a lot.

That's what my wife just said. Then I made a "big pussy" joke and she glared at me.

Timid Goddess:balancing act: Since this is Fark, and on Fark there is always SOMEONE that knows the answer; are ligers the ones that are missing the 'Hey, stop growing now" gene and can get ridiculously large? And would that affect the ultimate size of these lili guys?

Yes, they are. And if a pair had an F2 baby it would also lack the stop growing now gene. Does that mean tigons get stop growing now genes from both parents?

Tigons are apparently smaller than either parent species. If that helps. Probably not eh?

Timid Goddess:balancing act: Since this is Fark, and on Fark there is always SOMEONE that knows the answer; are ligers the ones that are missing the 'Hey, stop growing now" gene and can get ridiculously large? And would that affect the ultimate size of these lili guys?

Yes, they are. And if a pair had an F2 baby it would also lack the stop growing now gene. Does that mean tigons get stop growing now genes from both parents?

foo monkey:balancing act: Since this is Fark, and on Fark there is always SOMEONE that knows the answer; are ligers the ones that are missing the 'Hey, stop growing now" gene and can get ridiculously large? And would that affect the ultimate size of these lili guys?

Yes, ligers are larger than both their lion/tiger parents. I would think a liliger would be similarly large.

Female ligers aren't sterile. Male ligers are. They don't occur very often in nature, because lions and tigers rarely share the same habitat. Female ligers can reproduce with male lions and tigers.

/learned way too much about ligers today

Thank you two. It sounds like there isn't much of a chance for an F2 generation if the males are sterile. Probably for the best..

Wow, those are some surprisingly spotty kitties (yes, I know that tiger stripes are effectively an odd variant of tabby colouration, and I know there isn't too much difference between traditional tabbies (and spotty cats) and marble tabbies (with stripes being at the other end of the spectrum)--a marble-tabby pattern is known in king cheetahs--and I know that baaaaaaby lions tend to be somewhat spotty and then grow out of their spots). Rather almost like leopard or jaguar spots or even clouded leopard colouration--it's going to be interesting to see if they keep their spots as adults.

(And no, I do not encourage the breeding of ligers and liger-spawn, but this IS actually pretty interesting in a feline genetics aspect--we can KIND of see it with little cats and with ur-kitties close to the base of Kitty Evolution (the puma-cheetah clade), we don't get to see it too often with pantherines, though. Maybe these little adorable genetic nightmares can give hints on how kitties get properly spotty :D)

For those of you wondering about the "How liger was able to have little babbys" angle, here goes:

A scientist back in the 1920's discovered a principle (Haldane's rule) that the heterozygous sex offspring of a cross of two related species was sterile. In this case a male (XY) liger can't have offspring, and therefore there is no such thing as an offspring of two ligers. The female of such a hybrid (XX) may be fertile, although not necessarily (for example, female mules are rarely fertile even if they have estrus).

And to clarify, Morgellons, lions (Panthera leo) and tigers (Panthera tigris) are different species, oh my. But it has nothing necessarily to do with native range since lions and tigers used to have wider ranges that did indeed overlap.